For that litte red dot of a place, Singapore has had an outsize influence and strategic importance in Southeast Asia. At the southern tip in the Strait of Malacca, it controls a vital access point for the maritime trade routes connecting Europe, Africa, and Asia, (World Bank).
Singapore knows that its politico-economic survival depends on a balancing act between the West and China. The West valued Singapore’s first prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, an ardent Cold Warrior determined to stop the spread of Communism in the region. Thus, despite Lee’s close ties to Chinese officials and their sympathy for the authoritarian efficiency and corporatism of his “Asian values” ideology, Singapore would never become a Chinese ally, but partner as an odd couple.
[ VIEW Changi Naval Base, Singapore : 7-minute ]; read GlobalSecurity
Lee remained loyal to U.S. interests to the end: shortly after Obama took office, he advised the United States on its diplomatic “pivot” to Asia and the Pacific, and opened up military ports to assist with new U.S. military deployment within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region. Singapore is the first Southeast Asian country to join the Global Coalition which is committed to degrading and ultimately defeating Daesh.
Singapore reinforced and deepened its defense ties with the United States, signing two substantial agreements – the 2019 renewal of the 1990 Memorandum of Understanding Regarding United States Use of Facilities in Singapore (1990 MOU) and the Memorandum of Understanding Concerning the Republic of Singapore Air Force, (U.S. Security Cooperation With Singapore, 2022).
The pivot to Asia doctrine was opposed fervently by Jeyakumar Devaraj in an Open Letter to Obama Against the Trans Pacific Agreement which was no more than a global strategic goal of expanding the hegemony of finance capital at the lowest possible cost, (Sit Tsui, Erebus Wong, Lau Kin Chi and Wen Tiejun, Monthly Review, Dec 01, 2016).
Given this legacy, it is unsurprising that China harbours no illusions about Singapore’s allegiances.
For a geostrategic reason, China wants to open up another transportation channel from southwest China to the Indian Ocean, bypassing the dilemma in the Strait of Malacca.
This is the potential southbound route through Pakistan to the Indian Ocean. The primary goal would be to connect with Sri Lanka, where a new, world-class harbour would string up one more entrepot in the Indian Ocean.
ASEAN is the starting point of the maritime Silk Road proposed by China, but it is also the region most fraught with complexities, and where U.S. influence is most deeply rooted, and greatly influenced upon as in Indonesia where Robinson claims the United States and United Kingdom involvement with the Gestapu mass killing with an abundant documentary evidence pointing to the provision of cash, covert aid, equipment, intelligence, psywar (psychological warfare), and informal guarantees of amnesty, thereby emboldening the Indonesian army to move aggressively against the PKI (Parti Kommunis Indonesia).
US neo-imperialism design in the Philippines also aided repression in part of the counterinsurgency program known as Oplan Bantay Laya (OBL) launched by Arroyo’s “total war” policy against progressive, nationalist forces. Designed to “neutralize” members of people’s organizations deemed sympathetic to the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the New People’s Army (NPA), and the National Democratic Front (NDFP), the policy has resulted in massive killing of civilians whose total has now exceeded the number tallied during the entire period of the brutal Marcos dictatorship (1972-1986).
In Timor Leste, US knew Indonesia intended to stop East Timorese independence ‘through terror and violence’, and yet provided arms to Indonesia. Recent released classified documents by the National Security Archive’s researcher Brad Simpson clearly indicated a meeting between US secretary of defence William Cohen and the Indonesian commander of the armed forces, General Wiranto, less than two weeks after International Force for East Timor (Interfet) forces landed in East Timor – starkly demonstrated that it was the military aggression which mattered to Indonesia, and a mapping on the widening of US imperial consideration, (Monthly Review, June 06 2022).
Fast forward to the 21st century, Timor-Leste in limbo on being accepted as an ASEAN member, and being a middle-income country by 2030 as stated in its Strategic Development Plan, because many East Timorese are still living in deep poverty, almost two decades after independence, with fractured intermal politics.
The Sunrise oil and gas exploitation with Australia may be a bright ray of light, but the maritime geopolitics of Great Powers (with China’s deepwater port construction in Dili and the proposedAustralia piped oil-line to Darwin) may hinder its expected growth path, (Clive Schofield and Bec Strating, Sun setting on Timor-Leste’s Greater Sunrise plan, eastasiaforum, 30 March 2018).
[ VIEW Timor-Leste profits from a Sunrise 🌄 +8-minute ]
Indeed, Timor-Leste leader Jose Ramos-Horta on Sept 7 2022 had indicated that China could help fund the fossil fuel project seen as crucial to the nation's economic future, dismissing Western concerns over Beijing's growing influence.
Not too far away, in the tiny state of Brunei, the Sultan's interest to join the Federation of Malaysia was met with opposition from his country.
An armed resistance to challenge Brunei’s entry into Malaysia that followed became a pretext for Indonesia to launch its policy of Konfrontasi (1963–1966) with Malaysia.
[ VIEW Ganyang Malaysia by Soekarno: +8-min ]
On 8 December 1962, the “Brunei Revolt”, lead by A. M. Azahari, leader of the Partai Ra’ayat (People’s Party), under the banner of its clandestine military wing, the self-styled Tentara Nasional Kalimantan Utara (North Borneo National Army). The insurgents rapidly seized control of the oil fields in Seria and took Europeans as hostages as well as attacking several police stations and other government buildings in Brunei town.
Then, when that insurgency spread to North Borneo and Sarawak, the former colonialist sent Gurkha guards and British troops from Singapore and recaptured Seria on 11 December, causing the armed insurrection to disintegrate, (Chin, K. W. (1983). The defence of Malaysia and Singapore: The transformation of a security system, 1957–1971).
The outbreak of the revolt had conferred that there was a widespread resistance to the Malaysia plan within Brunei, and this might have tilted the sultan of Brunei's decision in July 1963 not to join Malaysia, (see The British secretly planned Malaysia since 1953).
The revolt once again substantially confirmed the strategic importance of the British presence with troops based in Singapore, (read W. David McIntyre, The Strategic Significance of Singapore, 1917-1942. The Naval Base and the Commonwealth and John McCarthy, The Singapore Strategy Revisited).
Singapore Navy's littoral combat ships in the Singapore Naval Base
Though the Brunei Revolt and its quick suppression by British troops sparked open opposition from the Philippines and Indonesia to the creation of Malaysia (see other resources here: Malaysian–American Relations During Indonesia's Confrontation Against Malaysia, 1963–66, March 1988, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 19(01):111 - 136, and an alternative explanation for The Confrontation), the British Territory of North Borneo (renamed Sabah), Sarawak, Singapore and Malaya eventually became a new Federation on 16th September 1963; {Huh? 318 or 169}.
A Brunei's neighbour is Sabah.
Sabah’s ambition to becoming the region’s logistics hub takes a huge step forward with a link-up with China’s Shandong Port Overseas Development Group, the biggest port operator in the world.
With the signing of a Strategic Collaboration Agreement, Sabah’s state-owed POIC Sabah Sdn Bhd and its industrial park and ports in Lahad Datu are now in the company of a global logistics player that marks a major step towards realizing its vision as the hub of logistics, resource amalgamation and manufacturing of the BIMP-EAGA region: the Brunei Darussalam–Indonesia–Malaysia–Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area is a cooperation initiative established in 1994 to spur development in the remote and less developed areas of the four participating Southeast Asian countries.
According to Shariman Lockman, a Senior Analyst in the Foreign Policy and Security Studies program at the ISIS Malaysia, it is a belief that Malaysia has a “special” relationship with China (see Geoff Wade, Xi Jinping and the Sabah enigma, The Strategist 24/10/2013); or, at least, more special than its neighbours in the region can claim, with China and Sabah.
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